A Change of Pace for Bay (sort of...)

Rating: 8/10 (15 July 2005)

I will readily admit that I rarely leave Micheal Bay movies thinking, "huh..." so it was with a mix of apprehension and excitement that I left "The Island" with just that thought. The movie follows the lives of Lincoln (remember the name) Six Echo and Jordon Two Delta, played with a startling innocence and focus by Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson respectively. The two live with thousands of other survivors in a post-apocalyptic world after the earth was "contaminated". Or so they think. What transpires is that Lincoln Six Echo, always the feisty one, discovers the terrible secret behind their existence. There was no mass extinction! The Island is just a way to pacify the masses whose true purpose is to act as organ donors for their wealthy owners. And so the two (whose sexual tension has come to a boil by this point) escape. Needless to say this poses a notable problem for the company's creator Merrick, played by the always sinister Sean Bean, who is already breaking a number of laws by allowing his clones to gain consciousness. So French mercenaries (French only to cover up Djimon Hounsou's accent) are brought in to kill our sexy duo. Cue massive explosions and the same old Bay car chase in which people drive very quickly down a busy highway while huge objects are dumped off the back of a big rig (if you're curious what it looks like, just go to the scene in "Bad Boys II"). Of course the action in "The Island" is cleaner and frankly more exciting because you don't feel like you're getting dumber as every second ticks by, a feeling I can seem to shake while watching Martin Lawrence scream as he hurtles down a Miami interstate. But what makes The Island truly a pleasant surprise is that's it's actually a smart movie. Not Adaptation smart, but let's be honest, in a time when the bar for clone movies is already pretty low (see the laughable Godsend as evidence) The Island does an excellent job of looking at the various angles to the quagmire of human cloning. Merrick, while obviously "evil" still has some good points. When Johansson escapes we are reminded that while we should root for her to gain her freedom, her freedom will come at the price of a mother's life. There are obviously some serious upsides to cloning and I tip my hat to Bay for exploring this. But what's most interesting about the film is the analogy to the slave trade. These clones are treated as property and constantly referred to as "product". They are given new names and pipe dream hopes in order to pacify them (The Island, read: the Motherland/freedom...) So it doesn't take an American History buff to see how clever a Lincoln character (actually named Lincoln) is to free these clones. It is the very virtue of these levels which makes The Island such a summer winner. It's not exactly a seamless mix of heady morality and blowing stuff up, but it's close. As close as you should expect to see in a Micheal Bay movie. So if you can go in thinking "Armageddon" and you might well come out thinking, "huh..."